Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is the second game in The Legend of Zelda series. It was seen as a letdown to many fans of the first game, in particular because the entire game engine shifted from a top-down view, to a side-view platform. Zelda II also has a sharper learning curve and incorporates RPG elements like experience points, levels, and spells.

However, the story elements are all there, and the game is actually pretty solid and a lot of fun, if you can forget that it's a Zelda game. However, the game tends to cover in the mighty shadow of the original.

Music

Zelda II borrows several themes from the first Legend of Zelda. It has a couple of fun tracks and some good mood music, but in 1986 when the music was created, the composers were still too inexperienced with the audio chips to make legendary orchestration. While Koji Kondo composed the soundtrack to the original game, Nintendo decided to have Akito Nakatsuka try his hand at composing the music. Like many other composers at the time, he had to write the music in 6502 assembly on his sound driver. The titles come from the soundtrack, but a few tracks from the album--that were merely sound effects--were left out.

The music has been criticized for its use of the vibrato in the square waves, as some say it sounds too "twangy". The Famicom Disk System version not only reduces the amount of vibrato, but also plays a bit quieter, some of the music is different, and the title music uses the Famicom Disk System's expansion sound channel, while in-game it's used for sound effects.